Many of the deaths and much of the economic damage from the Covid pandemic could have been prevented had the federal government been better prepared after decades of warnings, new Senate report says.
could have been prevented, particularly in the early months of the coronavirus's spread, had the federal government been better prepared after decades of warnings, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said in a report Thursday., cited long-term weaknesses in the country’s public health infrastructure, from staffing shortages and inadequate disease surveillance to poor testing systems.
China withheld vital information in the early days of its initial outbreak; U.S. officials, by contrast, had early warning signs and were slow to react, failing to quickly detect the virus’s spread in the U.S. The CDC missed at least half of the cases that came into the country in January and February 2020.
In January and February, as the virus began to spread more widely, the only available test had to be run out of CDC labs in Atlanta, which took days to return results. By the end of February, when tens of thousands of people had most likely been infected in the U.S., the CDC had tested fewer than 1,200, the report said.
The committee found that other parts of the federal government were raising warnings at the time about the weakness of the medical supply chain and the lack of necessary supplies. The report cited a Feb. 7, 2020, State Department memorandum saying a large manufacturer of personal protective equipment would be able to produce only 10% of its hazmat and surgical gown inventory because of a shortage in fabric from China.
Trump administration officials also failed to adequately communicate the risks to the public and limited the CDC’s communications after the agencyAfter that, the White House began requiring approval of all telebriefings, media requests and guidance documents, “resulting in lengthy delays of critical health guidance and restricting CDC’s ability to share information directly with the public,” as it “wasn’t allowed to hold public briefings,” the report said.
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